From the President
The 2025 Goldrick Seminar was an outstanding success. The flow of ideas and information at the Seminar contributed significantly to the ANI’s principal function: to be a platform and forum for discussion about naval and maritime matters. It also ran very smoothly organisationally.
I would like to personally thank all those who supported the Seminar, both through helping to organise the event and also those who attended. Our new format, using commercial conference facilities in Canberra, seems to have been successful and your Council will do a hot-washup at our next meeting in later this month.
To that end, I would greatly appreciate any feedback from members on the format, quality, logistics, catering etc anything that we can use to make the 2026 Goldrick even better. If you have any constructive feedback please send it to admin@navalinstitute.com.au and we will include it in the review.
Our attention now turns to Indo-Pacific 2025, to be held in Sydney 4-6 November. I am pleased to advise that the ANI is partnering with the Australian Association of Uncrewed Systems (AAUS) for their seminar as part of IndoPac.
We will be hosting a panel titled “A Fireside Chat with the AUKUS Pillar 2 Undersea Warfare Leadership – A Deep Dive on Pillar 2 USW Autonomous Systems and Priorities”. This panel will include senior representatives from the US, UK and Australia (including ANI Councillor CDRE Michael Turner, although appearing in his ‘day job’).
Before IndoPac the ANI is coordinating the marking of the Chief of Navy’s 2025 Essay Contest. Members from the ANI and Naval Studies Group at UNSW-Canberra have volunteered their time to mark this very important competition, and I was very pleased to see this year there were 94 entries across four categories.
Given the ANI’s mission to promote debate and discussion over naval and maritime affairs, this is a great outcome. CN aims to announce the winners at IndoPac and if you are one who has entered, can I wish you good luck. There appears to be some stiff competition this year and unfortunately there can only be one winner in each category, but the fact that you have entered is significant in itself, so well done to all 94 entrants.
And finally, if you receive the newsletter but are not yet a member off the ANI, why not join today. The next edition of the Australian Naval Review, our peer-reviewed journal, will be out later in the year and is distributed to all members. Join today to invest in the development of your profession, and to ensure you get your copy of the ANR as soon as it is released. You also get some great discounts on ANI events. The link to join is
https://navalinstitute.com.au/join-ani/Yours Aye
Pete Leavy
